IT to spend $10 billion on iPads in 2012, Forrester says

More IT departments will be required to support the consumer-friendly iPad tablet in 2012. One of the reasons:

It’s the preferred device of their company’s CEO.

That’s the word from a recent report by tech research firm Forrester, which predicts that businesses will spend $19 billion on Apple products this year. That includes $10 billion on iPads and $9 billion on Mac computers. Those numbers are a significant increase from the $12 billion spent last year (split evenly between iPads and Macs).

Of course, Windows machines will still take up a bulk of IT spending this year, accounting for an estimated $69 billion. But if that figure is correct, it’ll be a 3% drop from the prior year. And Forrester expects Apple to make further inroads in the enterprise, predicting iPad spending to rise to $16 billion in 2013, and spending on Apple computers to reach $12 billion by that time.

According to Forrester, the increase in IT spending on Apple products is a result of the growing trend of employees bringing their own devices into work. Many users already own iPads and are using them for work anyway. Therefore, Forrester says, many IT departments have started buying those products so users can at least be working on company-owned and IT-managed devices.

Another major factor in the increased support for Apple products, according to Forrester: Company CEOs have been buying them and requiring IT to support them. That’s led to a trickle-down effect where users throughout the company are doing the same.

Does your department support iPads and other products? Any advice to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

Our company currently currently supports Macintosh desktops for our product design groups and some other users whose interaction with that group require the use of Macintosh computers. We do not support iPads or other tablet based devices, such as Android based tablets or e-book reader devices. Our primary ERP systems run on an IBM Power based System i (aka iSeries, AS/400). The application GUI and 5250-based terminal emulation products that we use do not run those platforms, and our company is not currently looking for additional products for those platforms. The application GUI was provided by the ERP vendor, and has it own client licensing benefits that a third-party product would not provide. Our current 5250-based emulation is provided by IBM with the System i OS, with unlimited client licensing.

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